What is at stake at SCOTUS?
Three days to SCOTUS oral arguments
Go to United For Marriage for event locations and details.
To the US Supreme Court – “History is Watching”
From GetEqual.
Text of the video:
Since the birth of our nation, people held down by prejudice and discrimination have always moved slowly but inevitably toward justice and equality.
And throughout our history, the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States have been called upon to issue the critical rulings ensuring that our founding principles of justice and equality are delivered to those long denied them.
After centuries of injustice, countless generations lived in closets, through the watershed of Stonewall, the rise of Pride, the fight AGAINST AIDS, the fall of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and the demand that our relationships and our lives be shown the respect they deserve, the great weight of history has brought us to the doorstep of the Supreme Court. An unstoppable TIDAL wave is about to sweep over OUR NATION as our history and THOSE OF OUR JUSTICES WILL come together, forever united.
Major civil rights decisions are the most famous in the history of the court. The justices that MAKE the inevitable ruling of national marriage equality will secure their legacy’s forever. We have brought to your doorstep and laid at your feet your opportunity to craft one of the defining decisions of civil rights law for our republic, and with it, to define your legacy in history. If you let this opportunity slip away by ruling anything less than full national marriage equality, you will only be giving some future court the recognition for having done it. You have in your hands the power to bring to fruition decades of a people’s struggle for equality, and with it the opportunity of a jurist’s career to forever mark your name in our evolving understanding of the Constitution AND OUR COUNTRY’S PROMISE OF LIFE, LIBERTY & PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS FOR ALL.
Our equality will come. The only question is who will deliver it.
Equality is waiting…
History is watching…
For more info go to www.lighttojustice.org
SCOTUS to release audio recordings of Prop 8 & DOMA oral arguments
The New York Times is reporting that the US Supreme Court will release same-day recordings of oral arguments in the Prop 8 and DOMA cases:
The last time the court allowed same-day access to such recordings was a year ago, when it heard three days of arguments over the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law. The court’s general practice in recent years has been to release audio recordings of arguments at the end of the week.
The court said the recording of the hourlong argument in the first case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144, would be available on its Web site by 1 p.m. on March 26. That case is a challenge to Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage.
The recording of the argument in United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307, will last almost two hours and will be available by 2 p.m. on March 27, the court said. The case is a challenge of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
(via NYTimes)
7 Days to SCOTUS oral arguments
From the American Foundation for Equal Rights
From the American Foundation for Equal Rights.
Any questions?
The US Supreme Court – March 26, 2013
Forward.
Cleve Jones & David Mixner call for peaceful demonstrations regarding DOMA/Prop 8 SCOTUS cases
Longtime LGBT activists Cleve Jones and David Mixner have posted “a call to action”, calling for local demonstrations and grassroots actions around the time the Supreme Court will hear the Prop 8 and DOMA cases on March 26 and 27. From Jones and Mixner: “Between us, we have over 80 years of experience in the movement for peace and social justice. In particular, as gay men, we have fought for the rights and dignity of our own community, known today as LGBT. We do not claim that age necessarily brings wisdom, but it does bring memories and we have many… Now is the time, once again, to recognize the unique moment before us and to act with the greatest power and intelligence possible.” The activists say the best way to deal with the rally being organized by the anti-gay National Organization to Marriage is to “ignore them.” Instead, they “encourage all LGBT advocates and all fair-minded Americans who believe in equality and justice to take part in public actions on during the last week of March.” Link to Facebook page: National Equality Action. (source)
NOM to protest SCOTUS Prop 8 hearings
The National Organization for Marriage announced today that they’ll rally in Washington DC on March 26th, the day the Supreme Court begins hearing arguments in the Proposition 8 marrage equality case.
From their press release, via JMG:
When the Supreme Court convenes to hear oral arguments in what could be the Roe v. Wade of marriage, we’ll be there — and we hope you’ll be there with us!
…[We] hope that you can show up in person to stand with us on March 26th for what we pray will be an unprecedented outpouring of support for society’s most fundamental and sacred institution: marriage between a man and a woman.
Together, we’ll stand before the Supreme Court and make sure our voices are heard that we will not allow the dismantling of marriage by Judicial fiat to happen on our watch!
JMG reminds us that at NOM’s recent hate rally in the Bronx, thousands of attendees heard one preacher declare that homosexuals “are worthy of death.”
Prop 8 proponents file opening brief with SCOTUS
The anti-gay proponents of Proposition 8 have filed their opening brief with the Supreme Court.
Buzzfeed‘s Chris Geidner reports:
Arguing that the case brought by same-sex couples seeking to marry was unlike past gay rights cases where the court struck down anti-gay restrictions and also unlike Loving v. Virginia, in which the court struck down bans on interracial marriage, the proponents of Proposition 8 argue that there is no historic reason “for invalidating marriage as it has existed in California for virtually all of its history, as it was universally understood throughout this Nation (and the world) until just the last decade, and as it continues to be defined in the overwhelming majority of States and Nations.”
SCOTUS is scheduled to hear oral arguments on March 26.
SCOTUS schedules same-sex marriage arguments
From LegalTimes: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in two pending same-sex marriage cases on March 26 and March 27.
The justices slotted arguments in Hollingsworth v. Perry, a challenge involving California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage, for March 26, and in U.S. v. Windsor, concerning the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), on March 27.
In the Perry case, supporters of Prop. 8 challenge a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. They ask the justices whether the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause prohibits a state from defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
In Windsor, the justices will decide whether Section 3 of DOMA, establishing that marriage, for all federal purposes, is the union between a man and woman, violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee.